


long live the king, long live the--

by Anonymous



Category: Oedipus - Regina Spektor (Song)
Genre: Coup d'état, Gen, Misogyny, Pseudo-Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2020-12-29 06:40:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21135284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "then one morning I woke up and I thoughtOedipus, Oedipus, Oedipus, Oedipus. then one morning I woke up and thoughtRex, Rex, Rex, Rex"the king's 32nd son solves a ...problem.





	long live the king, long live the--

If there were any of them left to mock him, they would. Thirty two was supposed, in the King's mind, to be a closure of the first rank of his sons. Two rooms by two rooms by two rooms made the first block, and two blocks by two blocks held wives enough for sons to get to him, sons to be spent in war. And a duplicate set of blocks was under construction, and materials for a third (and then a fourth, no doubt) were stockpiled--pallets of brick and stone and lengths of board. 

But the thirty-second son was none of the closure the King had hoped for. The sons were housed in a simpler structure, four rooms by eight, each very simple, each served by a single maid, intended to fulfill _all_ his needs, although they were not to have sons of their own, not yet--that would be chosen by a not quite stochastic thinning of the ranks. All other men in the kingdom were barred from having sons, or at least from raising them.

The thirty-second queen, if anyone could call her that (and her son did), was part of the trouble, having once seized power when the king was indisposed. 

The first eight wives of the king were princesses, or at least nobility; by thirty-two he had plucked up the daughter of a family who had finally made some money in the ugly soap trade, boiling down tallow and brewing up lye from wood ashes. It was odd to know your one grandfather was a soapmaker, the king's butcher's baby brother, while the other had been king a quarter century ago.

The soapmaker's daughter bathed regularly, and that and not the skinny, starved, five years older maid had taught the thirty-second son what a woman's body looked like--it was the only opportunity, somehow, to actually meet his mother, the queen, the one who had brokered peace with the neighbouring league of merchants, while the king languished in bed with a sword wound and a case of dysentery.

But there was no future in that; the king had altered laws and household rules to ensure no woman could take power ever again. He was simply vindictive in such ways.

What he had been unable to do was remove the possibility that his first wife, a princess, could be left with the necessity to wed someone to hold the throne, because the old lords had been unwilling thus far to yield to primogenature in a case when the inheritance was immensely valuable (the whole kingdom) and more than about three, certainly more than ten, sons existed. Supposedly it could cause a civil war with a great many factions.

The soap maker's grandson thought the king's doings, and even the lords' inconsiderate attitude towards daughters was quite unjust. What could he do about it, surrounded by twos and fours, and five pairings upon pairings past primogenature? 

An answer came one morning in a relentless tempo: the story of the prince who had slain his father and married his own mother--well, that might not be necessary. 

No one expected, either, an internal conquest of the kingdom.

So murder and marriage, it was done quickly, and it was the only ready way; his first and thus far only order as king was to redirect the building supplies to a school building, of golden aspect ratio. Feeling a little dirty, he consummated the coup, for the benefit of the lords, and was shocked to be complimented by the princess.

Then he went to the lords and he finally visited his mother, told her of the mistake she had made him realize, and even <strike>his</strike> _her_ guilt, emulating Oedipus. 

The lords might not have known just how to interpret things, but the crowds at the gates who used to jeer and worry seemed cautiously keen on this development. A cheer when up, when the new (perhaps--it would have to be worked out) queens stepped forward, three of them: "Long live the king!" (they said in accustomed habit) "Long live the queens!"

It would not be reasonable, perhaps, to say they lived happily ever after; there is ever both joy and sorrow in lives, but it was a hopeful new beginning.


End file.
